Today I am going to clean a really sick bottle. Minerals have leached into the glass. The pro's refer to this as etching. First I fill the bottle with water so I can see where the worst areas are on the outside. That way I won't be wasting time working on areas that don't need it.
OK, now I dump out the water and Sara takes a picture. Look's like most of the problem is on the outside of the bottle, especially the back.
Now I go find my cleaning stuff. It actually takes me longer to find the supplies than to clean the bottle. Since minerals have fused with the glass on the entire back of the bottle and a spot on the front and areas of the sides so I have to remove the top layer of glass in these areas. About half of the bottle is good so when I'm done it's still going to look presentable I hope.
This is a picture of what I'm using:
800 grit silicone carbide sandpaper to take off a glass layer, and 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit to polish the glass, bought at Autozone.
The packages of sandpaper came to about $15.00 but you get enough for lots of bottles. I use the large eraser for the large areas and the pencil eraser for the small ones. Large eraser and pencil are from the dollar store. I actually got about 20 pencil's for a dollar. [
] Soon the large areas are small and I finish off with the pencil eraser. I spend an hour on this. Actually, that 's longer than I needed to because a couple times I realized I was wasting time polishing when it was already done, then turning the bottle over and over to admire it, then polishing, then admiring; you get the picture.
So now the outside of the bottle is done. I dry out the inside and I can see a lot of haze in it. I'm going to deal with that tomorrow maybe. Anyway, here it is now.
Front:
Back:
OK, now I dump out the water and Sara takes a picture. Look's like most of the problem is on the outside of the bottle, especially the back.
Now I go find my cleaning stuff. It actually takes me longer to find the supplies than to clean the bottle. Since minerals have fused with the glass on the entire back of the bottle and a spot on the front and areas of the sides so I have to remove the top layer of glass in these areas. About half of the bottle is good so when I'm done it's still going to look presentable I hope.
This is a picture of what I'm using:
800 grit silicone carbide sandpaper to take off a glass layer, and 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit to polish the glass, bought at Autozone.
The packages of sandpaper came to about $15.00 but you get enough for lots of bottles. I use the large eraser for the large areas and the pencil eraser for the small ones. Large eraser and pencil are from the dollar store. I actually got about 20 pencil's for a dollar. [
] Soon the large areas are small and I finish off with the pencil eraser. I spend an hour on this. Actually, that 's longer than I needed to because a couple times I realized I was wasting time polishing when it was already done, then turning the bottle over and over to admire it, then polishing, then admiring; you get the picture.So now the outside of the bottle is done. I dry out the inside and I can see a lot of haze in it. I'm going to deal with that tomorrow maybe. Anyway, here it is now.
Front:
Back:
